Expectations have heightened in recent years regarding high-quality, large-screen displays, such as high vision displays. These expectations are being answered with progress in research and development in fields relating to CRTs, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), plasma display panels (PDPs) and so on.
CRTs, which are conventionally widely-used as displays in televisions, are superior in regard to resolution and picture quality. However, CRTs are not suitable as large-screen displays of 40 inches or more due to the fact that a larger screen size leads to increased depth and weight. Furthermore, LCDs, while being advantageous in terms of low power consumption and avoiding the problems of depth and weight, have a limited viewing angle. This is something that must be improved if large-screen LCDs are to be manufactured.
In contrast, it is relatively easy to make large-screen PDPs even with a shallow depth, and 40-inch class PDPs have already been developed.
PDPs are roughly divided into direct current type (DC type) and alternating current type (AC type), AC type PDPs being the more common of the two due to their suitability as large-screen displays. AC type PDPs are also suitable for high-definition display.
Conventional PDPs generally have a structure such as that shown in FIG. 13. FIG. 13 is a perspective diagram of relevant parts of a PDP.
Generally, in a PDP a front panel PA1 and a back panel PA2 are sealed together at the edges. The front panel PA1 includes a first glass plate 100 on which line-shaped first display electrodes 101a and second display electrodes 101b are arranged alternately in parallel. A dielectric glass layer 102 made from lead glass covers the first glass plate 100 and the electrodes, and the surface of the dielectric glass layer 102 is covered by an MgO protective layer 103 that is an MgO deposition film or the like.
The back panel PA2 includes a second glass plate 110 on which address electrodes 111 are arranged in parallel in a stripe formation. A dielectric glass layer 112 covers the second glass plate 110 and the electrodes, and barrier ribs 113 are arranged on the surface of the dielectric glass layer 112 in parallel in a stripe formation so as to sandwich the address electrodes. Furthermore, red (R), green (G), and blue (B) phosphor layers 114 are formed between the barrier ribs.
The described front panel PA1 and back panel PA2 are sealed together so that the first and second display electrodes are orthogonal to the address electrodes. Next, discharge gas including xenon, neon, argon and helium is inserted between the front panel PA1 and the back panel PA2.
In the PDP having such a structure, the first display electrodes 101a and the second display electrodes 101b are provided with discharge gaps (Gap1) therebetween. A part where an adjacent first display electrode 101a and second display electrode 101b intersect with an address electrode 111 is a discharge cell CL (see FIG. 14 which is a plan diagram showing electrode arrangement).
A conventional PDP uses a display method called field time division display for displaying. In this method, each field is time-divided into a plurality of subfields, and images are displayed according to combinations of light being emitted or not in each sub-field.
In this driving method, image display is performed in each subfield by a series of operations in a plurality of periods: an initialization period, an address period, a sustain period, and an erase period. Specifically, writing is performed in the address period by applying an address pulse to the address electrodes while applying a scan pulse to the first display electrodes, which are scan electrodes. Then, sustained light emission is performed in the sustain period by repeatedly applying a sustain pulse between the first display electrodes and second display electrodes, which are sustain electrodes.
When the structure of the PDP is such that the distance between first and second display electrodes on adjacent lines is equal to the width of the gap between first and second display electrodes on a same line, erroneous discharge occurs easily between adjacent lines, as shown in FIG. 14 (between the i-th line and the i+1-th line). When heightening definition of the PDP, it is inevitable that the width of the gap between display electrodes is narrowed, consequently increasing erroneous discharge.